Updated January 25th 2010. 

Xceed DataGrid for WPF is now in its third year on the market, and has had a very productive release schedule: About 30 updates, of which 10 were major upgrades. That’s nearly an update a month. Here’s the roadmap for 2009 and beginning of 2010:

Throughout the year:

• Service releases addressing issues reported by developers

V3.2, Mid June 2009 [Released]:

• Improvements to Data Virtualization:
      - Support grouping
      - Built-in support for IQueryable (LINQ)
      - Support for inserting and deleting items with InsertionRow and DeleteCommand
      - Other minor features/improvements
• Full support for Entity Framework data sources
• Direct support for unbound columns
• Calculated columns
• Auto-detection of ComboBox columns (enums, foreign keys)
• Filter row to allow end-users more flexible filtering on a per-column basis
• Ability to supply custom distinct values for auto-filtering ranges
• Targets .NET 3.5 SP1

V3.5, End of August 2009 [Released]:

• New Tableflow view
• Fast animated smooth scrolling (with inertia) for impressive UI performance
• Also works when using data virtualization for great perceived responsiveness
• Sticky group headers (group header is always visible)
• Sticky master-detail master row and headers
• Full-column animated drag & drop reordering
• Loading / error indicator during long or failed data virtualization queries
• Starts with / Ends with in Filter Row
• Works with certain automated testing tools (but not QTP)
• New product: Xceed Professional Themes for WPF, high quality themes for all WPF controls so your entire app can have the same look

PDC 2009 Preview [Demonstrated to visitors]

• Come by Xceed's booth at PDC 2009 and meet some of the development team
• Touch enabled datagrid (theme for touch, smooth scrolling combo boxes, disappearing scrollbars, flick scrolling, bounce, etc.) 
• Xceed DataGrid for Silverlight made its first public appearance -- clients were quite impressed 

V3.6 early February 2010: 

• Targets .NET 3.5
• Performance enhancements when dealing with 100,000 rows or more
• Cell selection by rectangular region
• Multi-selection when using data virtualization
• QTP support
• Print preview
• Signature Xceed orange theme from the Live Explorer now available for developers
• Windows 7 fantasy theme
• Other minor improvements

V3.7 March-April 2010: 

• Targets .NET 4.0, but same as v3.6 otherwise.

V4.1, 4.2, 4.3, Q2-Q3 2010: 

• Search UI for end-users (possibly in the form of a Search row)
• Printing scaling, improvements and PDF export
• Touch enabled datagrid (theme for touch, smooth scrolling combo boxes, disappearing scrollbars, flick scrolling, bounce, etc.) 
• New group-by row, other UI refinements
• Filtering improvements, and filtering with DataGridVirtualizingQueryableCollectionView class
• More editor controls (multi-column combo box, time editor, etc.)
• Other most asked for features here on the forums, by email, etc.

Some of the features being considered for subsequent versions this year (please chime in on which ones you need most and also keep the suggestions coming. Reply directly to this thread):

• Set card widths in Cardflow 3D
• More Cardflow 3D features
• Additional 3D views
• Provide a library of CellValidationRules
• Animated transitions between cards
• More animations, new themes 
• Grouping and Master/Detail support in one or more 3D views
• More spreadsheet-type features

Please keep the suggestions coming.

 

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Odi Kosmatos
VP, R&D, Xceed

Hi,

A windows 7 theme would be great for the next release.

Thanks

Hi Odi,

 

since I got no reply and it's not in your current list, I would like to repeat my feature request for a RowEditor.

 

Currently, each editor is displayed in its corresponding cell.

In our application, the columns of our grids are showing only a subset of the information of the dataitem.

If the user clicks on a row, an editor should show up, giving the user the possibility to edit all the information the dataitem contains.

This editor should not be displayed inside a single cell but should fill the whole row.

 

I guess this is not possible at present, or am I wrong?

We could play with different row templates, but this would be much easier if there were some sort

of DataRow.TemplateSelector.

 

A RowEditor would enable us to implement the Xceed Grid for WPF in more ways than we can today.

 

Thanks,

Michael.

 

 I have a question about the built-in search.  I assume it will be like a dialogbox or something?  How would the user activate it?  I assume it wouldn't be activated by right clicking on the column header since that pops up a menu to make columns visible/hidden.   Or would it be part of that pop up menu?

 Was the calculated columns the request to allow the user to be able to select what total and group calculations he/she wants on that column?  Or was it something else?

 A new theme or two would be great.  I would love to see a theme or two with the same quality as that Glass theme.    (Who ever made that Glass theme needs a pat on the back or something)

 

 

>>A Windows 7 theme would be great for the next release.

We weren't expecting demand for that so soon, it won't make it into the next release but we'll be sure to consider it for the one after (or a themes-only update). 

>>RowEditor

Will discuss with the team. Anyone else need/would like this?

>>Built-in search

I saw this as a separate dialog box (invoked with a key combo, say like Control-F for "Find", or with a magnifier-glass icon on the grid or in your toolbar) that does a text-search throughout all columns of the datagrid. We are likely to not implement it this way in the next release though, without further feedback. Our current solution to address this need in the next release is to allow text search in the filter row, but on a per-column basis. So if you're looking for employee "Tim Sneath", you would type that full string in the employee column of the filter row, and only rows who'se employee column contains the subtext "Tim Sneath" would be displayed.

>>New themes

The Glass theme, and all other themes, were made by Matt (blog here) & Cat who will be making more themes after v3.2. For v3.2, we're extending our current themes so that the styles apply to all WPF controls, so your entire app can look as nice as Xceed DataGrid for WPF. If you're going to MIX09, you can meet them and pat 'em on the back yourself, they'll be there :)

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Odi Kosmatos
VP, R&D, Xceed

Hallo Odi,

What about a Datagrid for Silverlight, with nearly the same features, UI and API? Can we expect something like that in about a year or so? Personally, I think it would be a great hit and would leverage the WPF datagrid too?

 Paul

We're working on a Silverlight datagrid, a very special one. Silverlight is still quite a different beast than WPF. That may change with SL3 or SL4. As it stands now though, we can't make promises on having the same features, UI and API in a first release. It will take quite some time to get on par (feature-wise) with Xceed DataGrid for WPF Professional Edition.

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Odi Kosmatos
VP, R&D, Xceed

Hi,

 

we urgently need following features:

- full editing support in virtual mode (DataGridVirtualizingCollectionViewSource) - adding, editing, deleting.

- cancelable CurrentChanging - Items.CurrentChanging is not synchronized with grid in virtual mode and when I set Cancel to true, grid still change SelectedIndex.

- refresh single row (reread data from datasource)

 

Thanks

Vit

Request for a tree-grid from this post: http://xceed.com/CS/forums/thread/19025.aspx

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Odi Kosmatos
VP, R&D, Xceed

Just a few more suggestions...

1) Having some pre-existing dialogs could save people a bunch of time...perhaps have it as part of a sample program.  (Export To Excel, Export to XPS, Export to CVS, A dialog to change the views and all the other things you can do to alter the Grid appearance)  I do realize you have samples that do this but it does take time to extract them from the sample main window, make them into a nice looking dialog and then test them.

2) Add some methods to the grid:  Expand All Groups, Contract All Groups, Expand All Details, Contract All Details.

3) Have some way to scale the size of the Grid when you are printing to a printer.  I would love to use a smaller font size when I print.  I could also imagine a situation where I would want a larger font as well.

Hi,

Here is my suggestions:

• A multi-column combo box, with title column and order by support;
• A better NumericTextBox support for globalization or currency formats:
  http://xceed.com/CS/forums/thread/14845.aspx
  http://xceed.com/CS/forums/thread/19129.aspx
  

Regards,

Henrique

Thanks David, Henrique, and everybody else so far, please keep the suggestions coming.

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Odi Kosmatos
VP, R&D, Xceed

Hallo Odi,

WPF Datagrid should include other ways to view master-detail, for example in separate (splitter)panes. If the details can be viewed in another pane,the master-records are not scrolled away, which is much more user-friendly. In addition, the detail-records can be viewed directly, simply by selecting a master-record and indentation is not necessary. Ofcourse, splitter-pane views should be optional and WPF Datagrid should be able to generate them automatically (based on parameters) without hardcoding. It would be very nice if the end-user can switch between hierarchical master-detail view and pane-view.

With pane-support builtin, other options become possible. For example a detailview-pane like a propertygrid in which only some fields of the selected record will be viewed. For example, imagine a detailview-pane in which the image will be viewed for only the selected record of a tableview (not hierarchical master-detail). The cardview-layout is very usefull for a detailview-pane (selected record) in combination with a tableview-layout (all records).

Next, tabpage-support for sibling detail-records is also very nice. The Telerik gridview examples (release q1 2009) have them builtin (to give you a clue).

I suppose above mentioned options are not easy to build, but in my opinion would make the grid extremely powerfull and almost the only needed high-end UI-control to create full fletched business-applications.

Thanks, Paul

In general, this grid is GREAT! Very solid and flexible.

1) One thing i asked before is a selector column (check box column for selecting items) , i tried a sample your guys created and it really didn't work out very well.

 What we need is really simple: a checkeditems property for grid control and a ischecked(read/write) property for row object, with that, we can do some styling and create the feature fairly easily. CheckedItems are not the same as selecteditems.

 2) More themes, themes and themes! I am happy to hear that you guys are working on this direction, if you can, we need the liveexplorer theme.

3) On blueprint edition,  can you guys make the classes "partial" so in case we do want to change something on our own we can keep up with your upgrades more easily?

 

 

Hi Odi,

Please consider adding the ability to use a mix of Table and Card views within a single Master/Detail grid.

Thank You,

Roland